News Feature | September 5, 2014

DEA Rule Change Affects E-Prescribing

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Schedule Change On Hydrocodone Combination Products By DEA For E Prescribing

The DEA has issued changes to rescheduling and it will change what providers can and cannot electronically prescribe.

The DEA has issued a rule change restricting the prescribing of opiates which, in turn, will change the way e-prescribing function as well. Effective October 16, 2014, the new rule will move hydrocodone combination products - HCPs - from schedule III to schedule II.

"In making this change some of the thought is that this should limit the amount of free drug that is out there sitting in people's cabinets that people can take and use and abuse," said Sean Kelly, MD, CMO at Imprivata in an article for Healthcare IT News. "It also limits the ability of some providers who are over-prescribing these and putting them out there for consumption on the market."

The regulations for schedule II drugs are much stricter - either a paper prescription or an e-prescription are required and faxes and phone calls are not accepted. Seventy percent of U.S. doctors are e-prescribing, so any changes to requirements affect more than half of the nation’s providers.

Healthcare IT News quotes David Yakimischak, executive vice president and general manager for Surescripts, as saying, "What it means is that to write a prescription for schedule II there are only two ways to do that, one is with wet ink signature (a paper-based prescription handed to the patient) and the other is with e-prescribing, any other means of prescribing such as phone calls, or faxes is not permitted for schedule II.

"It's a pretty extensive set of changes that have been put in place and those changes have been implemented over the course of the last three years, but we still have a ways to go," he said. "It's not like the job is finished and everyone is 100 percent ready."

The new rule also mandates a two-factor authentication for better identity management and will require additional investment. Yakimischak explains, “There's some cost involved in the issuing of credentials and the software itself. Any time there's an upgrade now that has to happen in the field, that tends to be one of the slowest pieces, he adds, because with these upgrades vendors usually don't just bring out an upgrade for one thing.”